Paradise
by llivla
Summary: Season Zero. Yuugi never has any idea of what's going on. Post Shaadi Game. YYY


Disclaimer: I don't own Yugioh or said game king would have stayed crazy; or Utada Hikaru eerie song, _Paradise_ or _Sanctuary_. Kingdom Hearts… good times… not really, never played it. Too lazy and not enough time. Watch others though and laugh at Disney's little liberal inserts while the gaming producer's company tries to censor everything else.

* * *

Summary: Yuugi and FirstSeasonOMGPSYCHO! Puzzle Spirit have a moment… kind of, because, you know, he's psycho. 

A/N: Season 0 Dark Yuugi and Yuugi voice; need to have seen season zero, most of the episodes. This takes place after… uh… some of that other stuff. Be creative, I can't do everything you know. Oh and Yuugi's mom's name; that's Lediz… after reading her story it's become so ingrained I am under a welcome delusion that it's canon.

* * *

…_**just a little afraid  
**__**The window will be tinted  
**__**A nostalgic color  
**__**If we advance forth…  
**__**Hidden away…  
**__**Beneath the beautiful blue sky  
**__**We were slumbering forever**_

_**(All your fears and all my lies)  
**__**Beneath the blue sky...**_

- translated portions of "Paradise" by Utada Hikaru

* * *

"I am not an evil person." 

It was a statement Yuugi had never had to force upon or ensure himself of before. But then, he never had to take part in a game that had a possible outcome with Jounouchi falling into a dark abyss. He also never had to face someone so explicitly implying his lack of worthiness to live.

He _was_ good. Today, he was sure. He had finished his homework, he'd turned down Jounouchi's earlier offer of a stack of fresh "learning" magazines for the first time (causing said friend's jaw to drop), and even cleaned up Grandpa's dishes when the old man fell asleep at the table; Yuugi did the stock reports so he wouldn't have to. He didn't steal, he hated fighting, and he…hated lies.

I'm not an… evil person, Yuugi thought, looking down at the happy face of a large Chococat plushy grinning sadistically back up at him. The animal was ridiculous—its head almost as large as his, and that was including hair. Yuugi didn't mind either way, and Grandpa said he'd grow into it all one day.

'And I…I just wish it would get here already.' He pushed the animal away and laid down on his bed, one arm behind his head and the other toying absently with the eye on the Puzzle. When you're grown up everything made sense.

That Shaadi person… Yuugi shuddered a little, bringing his knees to his chest. He didn't understand why the lonely man had been talking about revenge, or why he was trying so hard to make him angry, trying so hard to make him _hate_—and using Anzu like that…he closed his eyes and tried not to cry.

He was good.

He had to be.

"I am not evil…" he said out loud desperately, leaning forward so his face was hidden. "But he thinks a part of me is. 'Another part.' What other part? Why does everyone keep talking about this other part? Kaiba-kun, Sheldon… I don't understand."

_Do you want to?_

He really was a work of—

His head snapped up.

His breath caught at the end and he sounded even younger if possible. "Uh? Who's there?" But that was silly; this was his room in his house and it was just him and Grandpa while Omocha was on business like Father—there was no one else in the house and Grandpa did not sound like that, so calm and mocking. He didn't know anyone who sounded like that, not without loathing in it too before he got hit.

"What's going on?" Yuugi shut his eyes tightly. "Why can't I remember things anymore?" He didn't understand, and he couldn't remember.

_Do you want to know?_

Yuugi sat very still. This had something to do with the Puzzle. It always did. But was it Shaadi again? He didn't think he was up to facing those loveless, empty eyes; it wasn't even like looking at Kaiba or Ushio, who fed on greed and pain. Shaadi fed on… nothing; there was nothing there.

"Are you Shaadi?"

_No. _And Yuugi was sold; it was a patient answer, filled with understanding and slight anger about Shaadi.

"Okay then." Yuugi swung his legs over the bed, Puzzle rocked back and forth gently against his chest. Yuugi didn't like to over-think things if he could help it, and he _was_ certain that putting to much thought into his messed up life would only bring more question than answers. He wanted answers. "I'm ready." He stood up slowly and looked around the ceiling nervously. "Aun… what do you want me to do?" He held the Puzzle hesitantly.

He could hear the lowest decibels of a chuckle. "Heh…"

_**wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I**_

His blinked and his heart pounded because he was suddenly already there. His room was gone and he was in a corridor that stretched on either side of him forever. He turned behind him and smiled at the welcoming light and… toys! It was warm, the very light and image was warm… and familiar, like he'd been there before, particularly just before and after his memory lapses. He gasped out, "Oh, I have to play with those!"

But then he frowned and looked ahead of him. "This door isn't so nice looking," he decided thoughtfully. He reached out to trace the vine carvings; touch the large projection of the familiar eye of Horus. When he applied more pressure to the latter he almost jumped as the door responded, but he couldn't see too far in. "The farther I get," he looked back, "from the light, the darker it gets." He stared into the other chamber with the kaleidoscope toys.

But then he remembered 'Don't you want to know?' and that was all that was needed to turn his head and step inside.

It was like…"an altar," he said thoughtfully, looking around. Greco-Egyptian, like the pictures Jii-chan showed him from the history books after the Empire fell. There were many columns, most cracked and fallen, but from the light from the friendlier chamber he could see the stone was marble. He could almost make out pictures and hieroglyphs on the walls, too. He ran his hand absently over a carving of a human-headed bird and some sort of plant.

"_Ba_…" he realized, remembering Jii-chan's lectures. "But they're everywhere. I wonder why." He traced the outstretched arms that seemed to have been compulsively yet painstakingly added to the free spaces where the official inscribers had left them out. One by one… but that must have taken so long… He looked forward, up. "Hello?" His voice didn't bounce off and echo; it was like the room caught it and held it in its hands to examine for secrets before throwing it away. Yuugi didn't mind, he had none.

He stopped when he noticed a door he hadn't seen when he first entered. He looked around, but there were no other surprises. He reached out his hand to touch it, looked back at the entrance to make sure it wasn't the same one. It seemed to react to his touch; he distantly hurt a lock rotating… He heard something behind the door. Something rustling, moving around. A big something. He looked down and saw… a handle? It was large and ornate like the rest of the door…

Something pulsed within.

"What is… inside?" He couldn't believe how curious he was! He normally only felt his way when he was examining the Puzzle, wondering how, exactly, he had managed to put it together. And now, like something from a dream or nightmare, something familiar… He reached for the thick handle hesitantly to face whatever was waiting for him. "Anyone else I wouldn't stop," a voice taunted, and Yuugi froze and stared at the door like it had spoken. "But you… I wouldn't go in there if I were you." Yuugi turned to his right to look at a pillar behind him. That voice… coming from there… from the top?

_**wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I**_

"Do you," he began hesitantly, his fists drawn up in question, one slightly to his chest and the other loose and wondering if he should reach out. "Do you know why I'm here?"

Even in the darkness he could make out a smile. He could hear a short laugh—"Heh. Hai." He said, equally short with that laugh.

"Then, why?" He asked with pleading eyes. "Onegai… I…" He looked around. "It's so dark."

Twik. Was it possible to _hear_ someone's eyes blinking to focus more intently on you? He heard the knowing laugh again; Yuugi wondered if he was walking into a trap. "Please tell me why I'm here." He implored, tilting his head forward slightly in case he missed a response.

The person apparently snapped his fingers from the sudden noise and the few empty torches were lit so that Yuugi could see a figure with legs over the edge of the column, but couldn't make out his face with it bent over like that.

**Omoidaseba haruka haruka**

"Simple." He said from his perch, smiling widely. "You were thinking 'how odd, these instances of memory loss.'" He looked up and grinned. "Right?"

"Ah, uh… hai." Why did he look sort of like him? Yuugi bit his lip, and gulped when the other on the column zeroed in on it and grinned wider.

/I want the other you to come out/  
/I want the other one, not you!/  
/Come out!/

Though, Yuugi hoped he never looked that scary.

**Mirai wa doko mademo kagayaiteta  
**_**(wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I)**_

The other laughed like he'd heard them, too. "Hai," he repeated, smiling, as thought fascinated with pronouncing it the same way he did. Then he vanished and reappeared right in front of Yuugi, who gasped and backed up a step. His wider eyes, though, weren't all that frightened. If anything, they were curious and in… complete awe. Something about him felt familiar, so he wasn't scared. Though his instincts on who would or wouldn't hurt him had a popular tendency to be wrong he couldn't bring himself to back up to the toy room—where somehow he knew or remembered this… person… wouldn't follow him.

**Bokura wa—  
****_(wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I)_  
**—**sukoshi dake obieteita**

"Keh," the other laughed, smiling with his eyes as well eerily. He took his left hand and ran his fingers through the top of Yuugi's mop of hair.

"Gah," Yuugi closed his right eye slightly and tried to look up at it through the slight, but not uncomfortable, pressure. "Who are you?"

He said through his grin, "The Judge of those who trespass."

"Trespass on…what?"

His face remained the same, yet slightly impassive. "My soul." He laughed. "Those who do must play a game."

Yuugi frowned up at him slightly with his eyebrow. "Game? …what kind of game?"

**Natsuka—**

"A special one."

"What if they win?"

—**shii iro ni**

He leaned in a little bit to tell him a secret: "They don't." He ruffled again and let his hand fall back.

**Mado ga somaru**

Yuugi stared at him when he leaned back. He touched the spot on his head where the hand had been uncertainly. The red eyes followed the movement obsessively.

Should he try to run back out the way he came? He couldn't move. He wasn't afraid. "What if they do?" He repeated stubbornly.

"I said they don't. I am the ruler of all Games," he smirked, "_Yuugi_." His eyes danced to his private joke the younger boy didn't understand.

**Mae wo muitereba mata aemasu ka  
****Mirai—  
****_(wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I)_**

"Huh," Yuugi tried to look at him in a way that he could break him down into pieces like he could everyone else, but there were too many. "Where is this?"

There was a tug again towards the other and Yuugi couldn't disobey the order to come closer; he looked down at the Puzzle. "Inside." He heard. "And in your mind and heart. Inside Puzzle, mind, and _ka_."

"Ka?" He thought about the arms on the wall again. "But there's kas everywhere!" His mind raced. "There are so many in here! Did you do them a—"

"Don't you worry. I'm making you forget soon enough."

"Forget?" He snapped out of his trance. "Why would I want to forget you already? I just met you! …How would you do that, anyway?"

**--wa doko edemo tsudzuiterunda  
****Ookina kanban no shita de  
****Jidai no—**

He froze as he felt the hands travel up the rope and make their way to his chin. He couldn't…break eye contact until they touched him there, and then he was fixated on the identical collar opposite him.

"Look up."

He did and lost his ability to breathe correctly at the sight of a glowing third eye in the center of his forehead.

**_(wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I)_**

"You asked," he said. "This is how I'd do it. But you aren't frightened, are you?"

Yuugi watched it for several minutes, not blinking. At first it could frighten anyone, after all, he didn't know too many people with flashing eyes in the center of their forehead. But it wasn't… ugly or anything. In fact, it changed constantly from gold to the spectrum and back so often it was quite the… opposite. "Should I be? You confuse me so much." Yuugi relaxed obliviously under his grasp. "You say you'll make me forget, show me bad things happening to people, but you aren't yelling or anything. You aren't kicking me or…" He winced when the grip turned briefly into a pinch, but as soon as it was realized it was gone. Anger… he felt anger coming from the other… but not at him… A cool thumb stroked his cheek to apologize.

"I won't."

—**utsuroi wo miteitai na**

"Why am I here?"

/"This room… heavy and frozen…"/

"I thought the door was locked." He looked around but there were no infinite stairs leading upside down or doors in the middle of the air. "Not just the main one but the one over…" He somehow wasn't surprised to find it gone. "I thought all the doors were…"

"No one comes in without my permission."

**Hitoshirezu  
****My heart's a battleground**

/Someone…someone barely jumped out of the way in time before the boulder fell to crush his vulnerable human body…/

/"Brutally closes in on an intruder."/

Yuugi thought he meant stopping him from opening the door when he found him. "I…Sorry, I don't remember asking." He looked down and tried to bow his head until the tug from the necklace came again.

"Keh," he laughed. "I should have clarified. No one is allowed but you." He cocked an eyebrow. "There, specific enough for you?" He snapped his fingers again and the fallen, aged columns were gone. Just a room with a familiar stone throne.

**(_snoitome owt deen I_)**

Yuugi somehow remembered—he saw Shaadi falling through a floor like a child's knocked over toy city. "I thought this was fake."

"It's an outer rim to my hidden heart." He looked at him. _I brought you here; anyone else would rot or crumble with their first step through. _

He was waiting for him to… what? Indulge in the compliment? He didn't see it that way. Wait, his lips hadn't moved—was he missing something? "But, I don't see why," he reached up to touch him in return. "Why am I…?"

He caught his hand. "I exist only by with your permission."

"Eh?" He looked up at him. "C-Can you say that again?"

His eyes had changed, they were distancing from him. His hands fell to his sides and he took a step back.

"I saw you and all you encompass, but yet you are so different at the same time; still unpredictable." He was looking at Yuugi's copy (?) of the Puzzle, tapped it once thoughtfully. "I chose you but you are not what I thought you were. Risky. You could find my room, I think… if I set you loose. I don't know how I feel about that. I should make you forget now. I should…

Unpredictable."

**Nido to aenu hito ni basho ni  
****Mado wo akeru**

"Unpredictable?" Him? He was just Mutou Yuugi. He was shorter than this person still; his voice hadn't changed; he didn't have a girlfriend; he wasn't strong or especially smart or…he should be the most predictable, boring person in the world. Lost in his confused thoughts, Yuugi snapped out of it when the other began to turn away. "Hey," he cried as something panicked about it.

"W-Wait. Wait!" Yuugi cried out. "Onegai! I…" He froze.

The other—_Yugioh_—was looking at him with a peculiar expression. Then Yuugi realized what he'd done as he looked at the hand he had reached out latched on the other's wrist.

**Omoidaseba haruka haruka  
****Mirai wa doko—**

"Gah," Yuugi dropped it and back away.

He continued to look at him like that from the side, as if he couldn't remember quite what Yuugi was exactly. "You know," he said conversationally. "I normally don't like it when people touch me."

**_wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I_**

/How _humiliating_./  
/Narrowed eyes, disgust, before he opened the door to darkness/

Yuugi gulped at the memory of the watch game, his heart rate picking up. He wanted to close his eyes, run, and didn't know in what order. Why did he come here? Why didn't he just let him walk away? He looked away and cowered a little and clutching his right hand like touching had burned him. "I… sorry."

"No, not that." There was movement; he was stepping forward.

Yuugi looked up. "Eh?"

Yugioh was smiling a little bit wider now, his expression still unchanged. "I didn't mind right then," he said, taking Yuugi hand and placing it where it was before, forcing the fingers to curl around his skin again. "I just realized how normally just how much I detest it from others."

/What if I made you fall?/  
/Chuckle/

**mademo kagayaiteta  
****Kirei na aozora no shita de**

Yuugi stared at his hand, watched the other's left fall to his side and let his right suspend where Yuugi 'grabbed' it. "And then how… not from you right then," he heard him finish.

Yuugi regretted ever doing it, because the other didn't say or do anything else. He just watched Yuugi's unique-colored, clueless eyes with a smug knowledge Yuugi was dying to know with his hand around his wrist. He wondered if he didn't do something first if this… person would have them stay like this forever…the other smiled at that like he'd heard and had a dark answer Yuugi _didn't_ want to know.

/Cold, blue—and yet so colorless—orbs in shock as they went higher/

Yuugi felt the thought strike. "Um, you didn't let him fall." He said suddenly.

He blinked at him, now he the curious one.

/He would be trapped in his soul forever/

"This means something to you." The other said.

"Ah," Yuugi didn't know about that. He decided to not think about it. "He was so tired from running your maze." Yuugi looked down. "That was me that broke the rope first right? I almost made you lose and caused Anzu to fall. I'm sorry."

"Don't talk to me about things like that."

"Huh?"

**Bokura wa it—  
****_(wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I)_**

"_Yuugi_…"

He looked up and froze. Yuugi saw a shattered mirror, he saw someone else controlling his hands and putting it together happily and calmly behind a blindfold, and Yuugi was standing next to him and watching but no one could see him, and his reflection stared up curiously at the satisfied controller.

Yuugi saw now the red eyes filled with darkness, Shadow magic, games, riddles, judgment…

And the Game Judge's unprecedented ruling in the spot where Yuugi's case laid.

'How do you know my name?'

"Yami no Gemme," he was saying slowly. "I had it reflect the purest part of the competitors." He said. "Yuugi, mine… it is always _you_…"

—**itsu mademo nemutteita**

All coming closer. A chill ran down his spine.

"Don't be afraid…"

If Yuugi were anyone else he would have been, but he was only…curious. For some reason, the other smiled.

He wasn't scared. "W-What are you looking for?" Yuugi asked him. "What are you searching me for?"

If he were anyone else… There were so many outstretched arms hand carved everywhere and… He was too close.

**(your fears and my lies)  
****Aozora no shita...  
**_**wonk uoy naht niotceffa erom deen I**_

_So perfect_, he heard, closed his eyes.

"Paradise."

_Purest part. Perfect_. _Mine. Yuugi… Don't be afraid. _

* * *

_Are you an angel?  
__Am I already that gone…  
__And sweet  
__sweet  
__Sweet surrender  
__Is all that I have to give.  
__I don't understand  
__The touch of your hand…_

-- Sarah McLachlan

* * *

It's hinted a multiple points in Takahashi's manga that when Atem split up his soul to save the world and seal the Yami no Gemme, the spiritual body or _ba_ was all that could be sealed into the Sennen Puzzle. The outstretched arms Dark Yuugi carved over and over is the hieroglyphic for _ka_, without which _ba_ can only reach the afterlife but not lay with the gods. The _ka_, incomplete without _ba_, was left to wander, and Takahashi hints that this _ka_ became Yuugi, hence why he is the only one to solve the Pharaoh's puzzle and was so helpless. So Dark Yuugi waited 3,000 years, just for him, and could only accept him. I think he realized this even when he was making people explode. 

And um... I nearly had nightmares when Dark Yuugi says 'How humiliating' to that watch guy...


End file.
